A pop-philosophical defense, not just of heaven but of the whole
Christian ethos, for troubled believers and tender-minded seekers.
Kreeft, who teaches philosophy at Boston College, sounds here like
a C. S. Lewis redivivus, with his passionate nostalgia for God, his
commonsensical arguments, and his crisp debater's prose. And he
leans very heavily on the Anglo-Catholic school (George MacDonald,
Charles Williams, J. R. R. Tolkien, etc.), of which Lewis was the
brightest apologetic light. If you happen lo be susceptible to the
appeal such writers make to your "naturally Christian" psyche, well
and good. But skeptical readers are going to raise objections.
Thus, Kreeft writes in a typical passage, "What you will find in
your heart" - i.e., if you can spare a few moments for quiet
introspection - "is not heaven but a heavenly hole, a womblike
emptiness crying out to be filled. impregnated by your divine
lover." This is Lewis' famous Sehnsucht, the haunting desire for
something (or rather Someone) beyond all mere earthly good, the
longing for a joy that transcends happiness. Kreeft insists, along
with Augustine. Pascal, Lewis, and others, that this fundamental
human nisus can only be fulfilled in the eternal possession of God,
in other words in heaven. The problem, of course, is that the
existence of a need doesn't necessarily imply the existence of the
means to satisfy it. To infer heaven from our hopes for it is
simply to rework the ontological argument, which, as Kant showed,
may be denied with impunity. So this vigorous, often eloquent
sermon will only touch those primed for it. This audience will also
enjoy the way Kreeft weaves a colorful skein of literary references
into his text. Apart from some dubious generalizations (e.g., the
death of God leads directly to the rape of nature) - a pious, but
intellectually responsible answer to Gauguin's questions, "Where do
we come from? What are we? Where are we going?" (Kirkus Reviews)
A major book on the subject of heaven, this expanded edition
examines the hunger for heaven that is so strong in all of us.
Fascinating and upbeat, Heaven, the Heart's Deepest Longing
thoroughly explores the psychological and theological dimensions of
this search for total joy and for the ultimate reality that grounds
it.
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